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A DOG 

OF FLANDERS 














































































































































Here is a doll 1 found in the snow. (Page 87) 


2 



















































































































































A DOG oj FLANDERS 

J OJg 

OUIDA 

(LOUISA DE LA RAMEE) 


(Illustrated by, 

HARVEY FULLER 

"A JUST RIGHT BOOK" 

’ PUBLISHED BY 

ALBERT WHITMAN GOMPANV 
CHICAGO 

E C \ 












TJTl 



A DOG OF FLANDERS 
Copyright 1927, Albert Whitman & Company 
Chicago, U. S. A. 




A JUST RIGHT BOOK 
Printed in the U. S. A. 




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They lived in a poor little hut 


contentedly. 


6 

















































































































































































A DOG OP FLANDERS 


Chapter I 

Nello and Patrasche were left all alone 
in the world. 

They were friends in a friendship 
closer than brotherhood. Nello was a little 
Ardennois—Patrasche was a big Fleming. 
They were both of the same age by length 
of years, yet one was still young, and the 
other was already old. They had dwelt 
together almost all their days: both were 
orphaned and destitute, and owed their 
lives to the same hand. It had been the 
beginning of the tie between them, their 
first bond of sympathy; and it had 

7 

















A DOG OF FLANDERS 


strengthened day by day, and had grown 
with their growth, firm and indissoluble, 
until they loved one another very greatly. 

Their home was a little hut on the 
edge of a little village—a Flemish village 
a league from Antwerp, set amidst flat 
breadths of pasture and corn-lands, with 
long fines of poplars and of alders bend¬ 
ing in the breeze on the edge of the great 
canal which ran through it. It had about 
a score of houses and homesteads, with 
shutters of bright green or sky-blue, and 
roofs rose-red or black and white, and 
walls white-washed until they shone in 
the sun like snow. In the center of the vil¬ 
lage stood a windmill, placed on a little 
moss-grown slope: it was a landmark to all 
the level country round. It had once been 
painted scarlet, sails and all, but that had 
been in its infancy, half a century or more 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


earlier, when it had ground wheat for the 
soldiers of Napoleon; and it was now a 
ruddy brown, tanned by wind and 
weather. It went queerly by fits and 
starts, as though rheumatic and stiff in the 
joints from age, but it served the whole 
neighborhood, which would have thought 
it almost as impious to carry grain else¬ 
where as to attend any other religious 
service than the mass that was performed 
at the altar of the little old gray church, 
with its conical steeple, which stood oppo¬ 
site to it, and whose single bell rang morn¬ 
ing, noon, and night with that strange, 
subdued, hollow sadness which every bell 
that hangs in the Low Countries seems to 
gain as an integral part of its melody. 

Within sound of the little melancholy 
clock almost from their birth upward, 
they had dwelt together, Nello and 


10 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 



Nello and Patrasche. 


Patrasche, in the little hut on the edge of 
the village, with the cathedral spire of 
Antwerp rising in the north-east, beyond 
the great green plain of seeding grass and 
spreading corn that stretched away from 
them like a tideless, changeless sea. It was 
the hut of a very old man, of a very poor 
man—of old Jehan Daas who in his time 






A DOG OF FLANDERS 


had been a soldier, and who remembered 
the wars that had trampled the country 
as oxen tread down the furrows, and who 
had brought from his service nothing 
except a wound, which had made him a 
cripple. 

When old Jehan Daas had reached his 
full eighty, his daughter had died in the 
Ardennes, hard by Stavelot, and had left 
him in legacy her two-year-old son. The 
old man could ill contrive to support him¬ 
self, but he took up the additional burden 
uncomplainingly, and it soon became wel¬ 
come and precious to him. Little Nello— 
which was but a pet diminutive for 
Nicolas—throve with him, and the old 
man and the little child lived in the poor 
little hut contentedly. 

It was a very humble little mud-hut 
indeed, but it was clean and white as a 


12 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


sea-shell, and stood in a small plot of gar¬ 
den-ground that yielded beans and herbs 
and pumpkins. They were very poor, ter¬ 
ribly poor—many a day they had nothing 
at all to eat. They never by any chance 
had enough: to have had enough to eat 
would have been to have reached paradise 
at once. But the old man was very gentle 
and good to the boy, and the boy was a 
beautiful, innocent, truthful, tender- 
natured creature; and they were happy on 
a crust and a few leaves of cabbage, and 
asked no more of earth or heaven; save 
indeed that Patrasche should be always 
with them, since without Patrasche where 
would they have been? 

For Patrasche was their alpha and 
omega; their treasury and granary; their 
store of gold and wand of wealth; their 
bread-winner and minister; their only 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 



Patrasche teas always with Nello. 


friend and comforter. Patrasche dead or 
gone from them, they must have laid 
themselves down and died likewise. Pa¬ 
trasche was body, brains, hands, head, and 
feet to both of them: Patrasche was their 
very life, their very soul. For Jehan Daas 
was old and a cripple, and Nello was but 
a child; and Patrasche was their dog. 






Chapter II 

A dog of Flanders—yellow of hide, 
large of head and limb, with wolf-like ears 
that stood erect, and legs bowed and feet 
widened in the muscular development 
wrought in his breed by many generations 
of hard service. Patrasche came of a race 
which had toiled hard and cruelly from 
sire to son in Flanders many a century— 
slaves of slaves, dogs of the people, beasts 
of the shafts and the harness, creatures 
that lived straining their sinews in the 
gall of the cart, and died breaking their 
hearts on the flints of the streets. 

Patrasche had been born of parents 
who had labored hard all their days over 
the sharp-set stones of the various cities 
and the long, shadowless, weary roads of 


14 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


15 



Patrusche 


the two Flanders and of Brabant. He had 
been born to no other heritage than those 
of pain and of toil. He had been fed on 
curses and baptized with blows. Why not? 
Patrasche was but a dog. Before he was 
fully grown he had known the bitter gall 
of the cart and the collar. Before he had 
entered his thirteenth month he had be¬ 
come the property of a hardware-dealer, 
who was accustomed to wander over the 
land north and south, from the blue sea 


16 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


to the green mountains. They sold him 
for a small price, because he was so young. 

This man was a drunkard and a brute. 
The life of Patrasche was a life of misery. 
His purchaser was a sullen, ill-living, bru¬ 
tal Brabantois, who heaped his cart full 
with pots and pans and flagons and buck¬ 
ets, and other wares of crockery and brass 
and tin, and left Patrasche to draw the 
load as best he might, whilst he himself 
lounged idly by the side in fat and slug¬ 
gish ease, smoking his black pipe and 
stopping at every wineshop or cafe on 
the road. 

Happily for Patrasche—or unhappily 
—he was very strong: he came of an iron 
race, long born and bred to such cruel 
travail; so that he did not die, but man¬ 
aged to drag on a wretched existence un¬ 
der the brutal burdens, the scarifying. 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


17 



Who heaped his cart full with pots and pans 


lashes, the hunger, the thirst, the blows, 
the curses, and the exhaustion which are 
the only wages with which the Flemings 
repay the most patient and laborious of 
all their four-footed victims. One day, 
after two years of this long and deadly 
agony, Patrasche was going on as usual 
along one of the straight, dusty, unlovely 
roads that lead to the city of Rubens. It 
was full midsummer, and very warm. His 
cart was very heavy, piled high with goods 
in metal and in earthenware. His owner 





18 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


sauntered on without noticing him other¬ 
wise than by the crack of the whip as it 
curled round his quivering loins. The 
Brabantois had paused to drink beer him¬ 
self at every wayside house, but he had 
forbidden Patrasche to stop a moment for 
a draught from the canal. Going along 
thus, in the full sun, on a scorching high¬ 
way, having eaten nothing for twenty- 
four hours, and, which was far worse to 
him, not having tasted water for near 
twelve, being blind with dust, sore with 
blows, and stupefied with the merciless 
weight which dragged upon his loins, Pa¬ 
trasche, for once, staggered and foamed a 
little at the mouth, and fell. 

He fell in the middle of the white, 
dusty road, in the full glare of the sun; he 
was sick unto death, and motionless. His 
master gave him the only medicine in his 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


19 


pharmacy — kicks and oaths and blows 
with a cudgel of oak, which had been 
often the only food and drink, the only 
wage and reward, ever offered to him. But 
Patrasche was beyond the reach of any 
torture or of any curses. Patrasche lay, 
dead to all appearances, down in the white 
powder of the summer dust. After a while, 
finding it useless to assail his ribs with 
punishment and his ears with maledic¬ 
tions, the Brabantois—deeming life gone 
in him, or going so nearly that his carcass 
was forever useless, unless indeed some 
one should strip it of the skin for gloves— 
cursed him fiercely in farewell, struck off 
the leathern bands of the harness, kicked 
his body heavily aside into the grass, and, 
groaning and muttering in savage wrath, 
pushed the cart lazily along the road up¬ 
hill, and left the dying dog there for the 


20 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


ants to sting and for the crows to pick. 

It was the last day before Kermesse 
away at Louvain, and the Brabantois was 
in haste to reach the fair and get a good 
place for his truck of brass wares. He was 
in fierce wrath, because Patrasche had 
been a strong and much-enduring animal, 
and because he himself had now the hard 
task of pushing his charette all the way to 
Louvain. But to stay to look after Pa¬ 
trasche never entered his thoughts: the 
beast was dying and useless, and he would 
steal, to replace him, the first large dog 
that he found wandering alone out of 
sight of its master. Patrasche had cost 
him nothing, or next to nothing, and for 
two long, cruel years had made him toil 
ceaselessly in his service from sunrise to 
sunset, through summer and winter, in 
fair weather and foul. 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


21 



Nello. 


He had got a fair use and a good profit 
out of Patrasche: being human, he was 
wise, and left the dog to draw his last 
breath alone in the ditch, and have his 
bloodshot eyes plucked out as they might 
be by the birds, whilst he himself went on 
his way to beg and to steal, to eat and to 
drink, to dance and to sing, in the mirth 
at Louvain. A dying dog, a dog of the cart 
—why should he waste hours over its 
agonies at peril of losing a handful of cop- 








22 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


per coins, at peril of a shout of laughter? 

Patrasche lay there, flung in the grass- 
green ditch. It was a busy road that day, 
and hundreds of people on foot and on 
mules, in wagons or in carts, went by, 
tramping quickly and joyously on to Lou¬ 
vain. Some saw him, most did not even 
look: all passed on. A dead dog more or 
less—it was nothing in Brabant: it would 
be nothing anywhere in the world. 

After a time, among the holiday¬ 
makers, there came a little old man who 
was bent and lame, and very feeble. He 
was in no guise for feasting: he was very 
poorly and miserably clad, and he dragged 
his silent way slowly through the dust 
among the pleasure-seekers. He looked at 
Patrasche, paused, wondered, turned 
aside, then kneeled down in the rank 
grass and weeds of the ditch, and surveyed 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


23 



There was with him a little, rosy , fair-haired, dark-eyed child. 


the dog with kindly eyes of pity. There 
was with him a little rosy, fair-haired, 
dark-eyed child of a few years old, who 
pattered in amidst the bushes, that were 
for him breast-high, and stood gazing 
with a pretty seriousness upon the poor, 
great, quiet beast. 

Thus it was that these two first met— 
the little Nello and the big Patrasche. 










Chapter III 

The upshot of that day was, that old 
Jehan Daas, with much laborious effort, 
drew the sufferer homeward to his own 
little hut, which was a stone’s throw off 
amidst the fields, and there tended him 
with so much care that the sickness, which 
had been a brain seizure, brought on by 
heat and thirst and exhaustion, with time 
and shade and rest passed away, and health 
and strength returned, and Patrasche 
staggered up again upon his four stout, 
tawny legs. 

Now for many weeks he had been use¬ 
less, powerless, sore, near to death; but 
all this time he had heard no rough word, 
had felt no harsh touch, but only the pity¬ 
ing murmurs of the little child’s voice and 


24 



In his sickness they hud grown to care for him. 


25 




























































































26 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


the soothing caress of the old man’s hand. 

In his sickness they too had grown to 
care for him, this lonely old man and the 
little happy child. He had a corner of the 
hut, with a heap of dry grass for his bed; 
and they had learned to listen eagerly for 
his breathing in the dark night, to tell 
them that he lived; and when he first was 
well enough to essay a loud, hollow, 
broken hay, they laughed aloud, and 
almost wept together for joy at such a sign 
of his sure restoration; and little Nello, in 
delighted glee, hung round his rugged 
neck with chains of marguerites, and 
kissed him with fresh and ruddy lips. 

So then when Patrasche arose, himself 
again, strong, big, gaunt, powerful, his 
great wistful eyes had a gentle astonish¬ 
ment in them that there were no curses to 
rouse him and no blows to drive him; and 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


27 


his heart awakened to a mighty love, 
which never wavered once in its fidelity 
whilst life abode with him. 

But Patrasche, being a dog, was grate¬ 
ful. Patrasche lay pondering long with 
grave, tender, musing brown eyes, watch¬ 
ing the movements of his friends. 

Now, the old soldier, Jehan Daas, 
could do nothing for his living but limp 
about a little with a small cart, with which 
he carried daily the milk-cans of those 
happier neighbors who owned cattle away 
into the town of Antwerp. The villagers 
gave him the employment a little out of 
charity—more because it suited them well 
to send their milk into the town by so 
honest a carrier, and bide at home them¬ 
selves to look after their gardens, their 
cows, their poultry, or their little fields. 
But it was becoming hard work for the 


28 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


old man. He was eighty-three, and An¬ 
twerp was a good league off, or more. 

Patrasche watched the milk-cans come 
and go that one day when he had got well 
and was lying in the sun with the wreath 
of marguerites round his tawny neck. 

The next morning, Patrasche, before 
the old man, had touched the cart, arose 
and walked to it and placed himself 
betwixt its handles, and testified as plainly 
as dumb show could do his desire and his 
ability to work in return for the bread of 
charity that he had eaten. Jehan Daas 
resisted long, for the old man was one of 
those who thought it a foul shame to bind 
dogs to labor for which Nature never 
formed them. But Patrasche would not 
be gainsaid: finding they did not harness 
him, he tried to draw the cart onward 
with his teeth. 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


29 


At length Jehan Daas gave way, van¬ 
quished by the persistence and the grati¬ 
tude of this creature whom he had suc¬ 
cored. He fashioned his cart so that 
Patrasche could run in it, and this he did 
every morning of his life thenceforth. 

When the winter came, Jehan Daas 
thanked the blessed fortune that had 
brought him to the dying dog in the ditch 
that fair-day of Louvain; for he was very 
old, and he grew feebler with each year, 
and he would ill have known how to pull 
his load of milk-cans over the snows and 
through the deep ruts in the mud if it had 
not been for the strength and the industry 
of the animal he had befriended. As for 
Patrasche, it seemed heaven to him. After 
the frightful burdens that his old master 
had compelled him to strain under, at the 
call of the whip at every step, it seemed 


30 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


nothing to him but amusement to step 
out with this little light green cart, with 
is bright brass cans, by the side of the 
gentle old man who always paid him with 
a tender caress and with a kindly word. 
Besides, his work was over by three or 
four in the day, and after that time he was 
free to do as he would—to stretch himself, 
to sleep in the sun, to wander in the fields, 
to romp with the young child, or to play 
with his fellow-dogs. Patrasche was very 
happy. 

Fortunately for his peace, his former 
owner was killed in a drunken brawl at 
the Kermesse of Mechlin, and so sought 
not after him nor disturbed him in his 
new and well-loved home. 


Chapter IV 

A few years later, old Jehan Daas, who 
had always been a cripple, became so 
paralyzed with rheumatism that it was 
impossible for him to go out with the cart 
any more. Then little Nello, being now 
grown to his sixth year of age, and know¬ 
ing the town well from having accom¬ 
panied his grandfather so many times, 
took has place beside the cart, and sold 
the milk and received the coins in 
exchange, and brought them back to their 
respective owners with a pretty grace and 
seriousness which charmed all who beheld 
him. 

The little Ardennois was a beautiful 
child, with dark, grave, tender eyes, and a 
lovely bloom upon his face, and fair locks 

31 


32 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


that clustered to his throat; and many an 
artist sketched the group as it went by 
him—the green cart with the brass flagons 
of Teniers and Mieris and Van Tal, and 
the great tawny-colored, massive dog, with 
his belled harness that chimed cheerily as 
he went, and the small figure that ran 
beside him which had little white feet in 
great wooden shoes, and a soft, grave, 
innocent, happy face like the little fair 
children of Rubens. 

Nello and Patrasche did the work so 
well and so joyfully together that Jehan 
Daas himself, when the summer came and 
he was better again, had no need to stir 
out, but could sit in the doorway in the 
sun and see them go forth through the 
garden wicket, and then doze and dream 
and pray a little, and then awake again as 
the clock tolled three and watch for their 


Little IS ell o now grown to six years of age 


■ 







33 














































































































































34 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


return. And on their return Patrasche 
would shake himself free of his harness 
with a bay of glee, and Nello would 
recount with pride the doings of the day; 
and they would all go in together to their 
meal of rye bread and milk or soup, and 
would see ,the shadows lengthen over the 
great plain, and see the twilight veil the 
fair cathedral spire; and then lie down 
together to sleep peacefully while the old 
man said a prayer. 

So the day and the years went on, and 
the lives of Nello and Patrasche were 
happy, innocent, and healthful. 

In the spring and summer especially 
were they glad. Flanders is not a lovely 
land, and around the burgh of Rubens it 
is perhaps least lovely of all. Corn and 
colza, pasture and plough, succeed each 
other on the characterless plain in weary- 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


35 


ing repetition, and save by some gaunt 
gray tower, with its peal of pathetic bells, 
or some figure coming athwart the fields, 
made picturesque by a gleaner’s bundle or 
a woodman’s fagot, there is no change, no 
variety, no beauty anywhere; and he who 
has dwelt upon the mountains or amidst 
the forests feels oppressed as by imprison¬ 
ment with the tedium and the endlessness 
of that vast and dreary level. But it is 
green and very fertile, and it has wide 
horizons that have a certain charm of 
their own even in their dulness and 
monotony; and among the rushes by the 
water-side the flowers grow, and the trees 
rise tall and fresh where the barges glide 
with their great hulks black against the 
sun, and the little green barrels and vari¬ 
colored flags gay against the leaves. Any¬ 
way, there is greenery and breadth of 


36 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 



Nello would recount the doings of the day. 


space enough to be as good as beauty to a 
child and a dog; and these two asked no 
better, when their work was done, than to 
lie buried in the lush grasses on the side 
of the canal, and watch the cumbrous ves¬ 
sels drifting by and bringing the crisp salt 
smell of the sea among the blossoming 
scents of the country summer. 

True, in the winter it was harder, and 
they had to rise in the darkness and the 
hitter cold, and they had seldom as much 





A DOG OF FLANDERS 


37 


as they could have eaten any day, and the 
hut was scarce better than a shed when 
the nights were cold, although it looked 
so pretty in warm weather, buried in a 
great kindly-clambering vine, that never 
bore fruit, indeed, but which covered it 
with luxuriant green tracery all through 
the months of blossom and harvest. In 
winter the winds found many holes in the 
walls of the poor little hut, and the vine 
was black and leafless, and the bare lands 
looked very bleak and drear without, and 
sometimes within the floor was flooded 
and frozen. In winter it was hard, and 
the snow numbed the little white limbs of 
Nello, and the icicles cut the brave, untir¬ 
ing feet of Patrasche. 

But even then they were never heard 
to lament, either of them. The child’s 
wooden shoes and the dog’s four legs 


38 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


would trot manfully together over the 
frozen fields to the chime of the bells on 
the harness; and then sometimes, in the 
streets of Antwerp, some housewife would 
bring them a bowl of soup and a handful 
of bread, or some kindly trader would 
throw some billets of fuel into the little 
cart as it went homeward, or some woman 
in their own village would bid them keep 
some share of the milk they carried for 
their own food; and then they would run 
over the white lands, through the early 
darkness, bright and happy, and burst 
with a shout of joy into their home. 

So, on the whole, it was well with 
them, very well; and Patrasche, meeting 
on the highway or in the public streets the 
many dogs who toiled from daybreak into 
nightfall, paid only with blows and curses, 
and loosened from the shafts with a kick 


Some housewife would bring them a 


bowl of soup. 





MaRV'hY 
F : yL C=.P» 


■ 


39 




















































































40 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


to starve and freeze as best they might— 
Patrasche in his heart was very grateful 
to his fate, and thought it the fairest and 
the kindliest the world could hold. 
Though he was often very hungry indeed 
when he lay down at night; though he had 
to work in the heats of summer noons and 
the rasping chills of winter dawns; though 
his feet were often tender with wounds 
from sharp edges of the jagged pavement; 
though he had to perform tasks beyond 
his strength and against his nature—yet 
he was grateful and content: he did his 
duty with each day, and the eyes that he 
loved smiled down on him. It was suffi¬ 
cient for Patrasche. 


Chapter V 

There was only one thing which caused 
Patrasche any uneasiness in his life, and 
it was this. Antwerp, as all the world 
knows, is full at every turn of old piles of 
stones, dark and ancient and majestic 
standing in crooked courts, jammed 
against gateways and taverns, rising by 
the water’s edge, with bells ringing above 
them in the air, and ever and again out of 
their arched doors a swell of music peal¬ 
ing. There they remain, the grand old 
sanctuaries of the past, shut in amidst the 
squalor, the hurry, the crowds, the unlove¬ 
liness, and the commerce of the modern 
world, and all day long the clouds drift 
and the birds circle and the winds sigh 
around them, and beneath the earth at 
their feet there sleeps—Rubens. 


41 


42 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


And the greatness of the mighty Mas¬ 
ter still rests upon Antwerp, and wherever 
we turn in its narrow streets his glory lies 
therein, so that all mean things are thereby 
transfigured; and as we pace slowly 
through the winding ways, and by the 
edge of the stagnant water, and through 
the noisome courts, his spirit abides with 
us, and the heroic beauty of his visions is 
about us, and the stones that once felt his 
footsteps and bore his shadow seem to 
arise and speak of him with living voices. 
For the city which is the tomb of Rubens 
still lives to us through him, and him 
alone. 

It is so quiet there by that great white 
sepulchre—so quiet, save only when the 
organ peals and the choir cries aloud the 
Salve Regina or the Kyrie Eleison. Sure 
no artist ever had a greater gravestone 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


43 


than that pure marble sanctuary gives to 
him in the heart of his birthplace in the 
chancel of St. Jacques. 

Without Rubens, what were Antwerp? 
A dirty, dusky, bustling mart, which no 
man would ever care to look upon save 
the traders who do business on its wharves. 
With Rubens, to the whole world of men 
it is a sacred name, a sacred soil, a Bethle¬ 
hem where a god of Art saw light, a Gol¬ 
gotha where a god of Art lies dead. 

O nations! closely should you treasure 
your great men, for by them alone will 
the future know of you. Flanders in 
her generations has been wise. In his life 
she glorified this greatest of her sons, and 
in his death she magnifies his name. But 
her wisdom is very rare. 

Now, the trouble of Patrasche was 
this. Into these great, sad piles of stones, 


44 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


that reared their melancholy majesty 
above the crowded roofs, the child Nello 
would many and many a time enter, and 
disappear through their dark arched por¬ 
tals, whilst Patrasche, left without upon 
the pavement, would wearily and vainly 
ponder on what could be the charm 
which thus allured from him his insepa¬ 
rable and beloved companion. Once or 
twice he did essay to see for himself, clat¬ 
tering up the steps with his milk-cart 
behind him; but thereon he had been 
always sent back again summarily by a 
tall custodian in black clothes and silver 
chains of office; and fearful of bringing 
his little master into trouble, he desisted, 
and remained couched patiently before 
the churches until such time as the boy 
reappeared. It was not the fact of his 
going into them which disturbed 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


45 



Whenever he returned home. 


Patrasche: he knew that people went to 
church: all the village went to the small, 
tumbledown, gray pile opposite the red 
windmill. What troubled h i m was that 
little Nello always looked strange when 
he came out, always very flushed or very 
pale; and whenever he returned home 
after such visitations would sit silent and 
dreaming, not caring to play, but gazing 
out at the evening skies beyond the line 
of the canal, very subdued and almost sad. 







46 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


What was it? wondered Patrasche. He 
thought it could not he good or natural 
for the little lad to be so grave, and in his 
dumb fashion he tried all he could to 
keep Nello by him in the sunny fields or 
in the busy market-place. But to the 
churches Nello would go: most often of all 
would he go to the great cathedral; and 
Patrasche, left without on the stones by 
the iron fragments of Quentin Matsys’s 
gate, would stretch himself and yawn and 
sigh, and even howl now and then, all in 
vain, until the doors closed and the child 
perforce came forth again, and winding 
his arms about the dog’s neck would kiss 
him on his broad, tawny-colored fore¬ 
head, and murmur always the same words: 
“If I could only see them, Patrasche!— 
if I could only see them!” 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


47 


What were they? pondered Patrasche, 
looking up with large, wistful, sympa¬ 
thetic eyes. 

One day, when the custodian was out 
of the way and the doors left ajar, he got 
in for a moment after his little friend and 
saw. “They” were two great covered pic¬ 
tures on either side of the choir. 

Nello was kneeling, rapt as in an 
ecstasy, before the altar-picture of the 
Assumption, and when he noticed 
Patrasche, and rose and drew the dog 
gently out into the air, his face was wet 
with tears, and he looked up at the veiled 
places as he passed them, and murmured 
to his companion, “It is so terrible not to 
see them, Patrasche, just because one is 
poor and cannot pay! He never meant 
that the poor should not see them when 
he painted them, I am sure. He would 


48 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


have had us see them any day, and every 
day: that I am sure. And they keep them 
shrouded there—shrouded in the dark, 
the beautiful things!—and they never feel 
the light, and no eyes look on them, 
unless rich people come and pay. If I 
could only see them, I would be content 
to die.” 

But he could not see them, and 
Patrasche could not help him, for to gain 
the silver piece that the church exacts as 
the price for looking on the glories of the 
Elevation of the Cross and the Descent of 
the Cross was a thing as utterly beyond 
the powers of either of them as it would 
have been to scale the heights of the 
cathedral spire. They had never so much 
as a sou to spare: if they cleared enough 
to get a little wood for the stove, a little 
broth for the pot, it was the utmost they 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


49 


could do. And yet the heart of the child 
was set in sore and endless longing upon 
beholding the greatness of the two veiled 
Rubens. 

The whole soul of the little Ardennois 
thrilled and stirred with an absorbing pas¬ 
sion for Art. Going on his ways through 
the old city in the early days before the 
sun or the people had risen, Nello, who 
looked only a little peasant-boy, with a 
great dog drawing milk to sell from door 
to door, was in a heaven of dreams where¬ 
of Rubens was the god. Nello, cold and 
hungry, with stockingless feet in wooden 
shoes, and the winter winds blowing 
among his curls and lifting his poor thin 
garments, was in a rapture of meditation, 
wherein all that he saw was the beautiful 
fair face of the Mary of the Assumption, 
with the waves of her golden hair lying 


50 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


upon her shoulders, and the light of an 
eternal sun shining down upon her brow. 
Nello, reared in poverty, and buffeted by 
fortune, and untaught in letters and 
unheeded by men, had the compensation 
or the curse which is called Genius. 

No one knew it. He as little as any. 
No one knew it. Only indeed Patrasche, 
who, being with him always, saw h im 
draw with chalk upon the stones any and 
every thing that grew or breathed, heard 
him on his little bed of hay murmur all 
manner of timid, pathetic prayers to the 
spirit of the great Master; watched his 
gaze darken and his face radiate at the 
evening glow of sunset or the rosy rising 
of the dawn; and felt many and many a 
time the tears of a strange, nameless pain 
and joy, mingled together, fall hotly from 
the bright young eyes upon his own 
wrinkled yellow forehead. 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


51 



Only Patrasche saw him draw with chalk upon the stones. 


“I should go to my grave quite con¬ 
tent if I thought, Nello, that when thou 
growest a man thou couldst own this hut 
and the little plot of ground, and labor for 
thyself, and be called Daas by thy neigh¬ 
bors,” said the old man Jehan many an 
hour from his bed. For to own a bit of 
soil, and to be called Daas—master—by 
the hamlet round, is to have achieved the 
highest ideal of a Flemish peasant; and 
the old soldier, who had wandered over 
all the earth in his youth, and had brought 













52 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


nothing back, deemed in his old age that 
to live and die on one spot in contented 
humility was the fairest fate he could 
desire for his darling. But Nello said 
nothing. 

The same leaven was working in him 
that in other times begat Rubens and 
Jordans and the Van Eycks, and all 
their wondrous tribe, and in times more 
recent begat in the green country of the 
Ardennes, where the Meuse washes the 
old walls of Dijon, the great artist of the 
Patroclus, whose genius is too near us for 
us aright to measure its divinity. 


Chapter VI 

Nello dreamed of other things in the 
future than of tilling the little rood of 
earth, and living under the wattle roof, 
and being called Daas by neighbors a 
little poorer or a little less poor than 
himself. The cathedral spire, where it 
rose beyond the fields in the ruddy eve¬ 
ning skies or in the dim, gray, misty 
mornings, said other things to him than 
this. But these he told only to Patrasche, 
whispering, childlike, his fancies in the 
dog’s ear when they went together at 
their work through the fogs of the day¬ 
break, or lay together at their rest among 
the rustling rushes by the water’s side. 

For such dreams are not easily shaped 
into speech to awake the slow sympathies 

53 


54 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


of human auditors; and they would only 
have sorely perplexed and troubled the 
poor old man bedridden in his corner, 
who, for his part, whenever he had trod¬ 
den the streets of Antwerp, had thought 
the daub of blue and red that they called 
a Madonna, on the walls of the wine-shop 
where he drank his sou’s worth of black 
beer, quite as good as any of the famous 
altar-pieces for which the stranger folk 
travelled far and wide into Flanders from 
every land on which the good sun shone. 

There was only one other beside 
Patrasche to whom Nello could talk at all 
of his daring fantasies. This other was 
little Alois, who lived at the old red mill 
on the grassy mound, and whose father, 
the miller, was the best-to-do husband¬ 
man in all the village. Little Alois was 
only a pretty baby with soft round, rosy 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


55 


features, made lovely by those sweet dark 
eyes that the Spanish rule has left in so 
many a Flemish face, in testimony of the 
Alvan dominion, as Spanish art has left 
broadsown throughout the country majes¬ 
tic palaces and stately courts, gilded 
house-fronts and sculptured lintels— 
histories in blazonry and poems in stone. 

Little Alois was often with Nello and 
Patrasche. They played in the fields, they 
ran in the snow, they gathered the daisies 
and bilberries, they went up to the old 
gray church together, and they often sat 
together by the broad wood-fire in the 
mill-house. Little Alois, indeed, was the 
richest child in the hamlet. She had 
neither brother nor sister; her blue serge 
dress had never a hole in it; at Kermesse 
she had as many gilded nuts and Agni Dei 
in sugar as her hands could hold; and 


56 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


when she went up for her first com¬ 
munion her flaxen curls were covered 
with a cap of richest Mechlin lace, which 
had been her mother’s and her grand¬ 
mother’s before it came to her. Men spoke 
already, though she had but twelve years, 
of the good wife she would be for their 
sons to woo and win; but she herself was 
a little gay, simple child, in nowise con¬ 
scious of her heritage, and she loved no 
playfellows so well as Jehan Daas’s grand¬ 
son and his dog. 




















Chapter VII 

One day her father, Baas Cogez, a good 
man, but somewhat stern, came on a 
pretty group in the long meadow behind 
the mill, where the aftermath had that 
day been cut. It was his little daughter 
sitting amidst the hay, with the great 
tawny head of Patrasche on her lap, and 
many wreaths of poppies and blue corn¬ 
flowers round them both: on a clean 
smooth slab of pine wood the boy Nello 
drew their likeness with a stick of char¬ 
coal. 

The miller stood and looked at the 
portrait with tears in his eyes, it was so 
strangely like, and he loved his only child 
closely and well. Then he roughly chid 
the little girl for idling there whilst her 


57 


58 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


mother needed her within, and sent her 
indoors crying and afraid: then, turning, 
he snatched the wood from Nello’s hands. 
“Dost do much of such folly?” he asked, 
but there was a tremble in his voice. 

Nello colored and hung his head. “I 
draw everything I see,” he murmured. 

The miller was silent: then he stretched 
his hand out with a franc in it. “It is 
folly, as I say, and evil waste of time: 
nevertheless, it is like Alois, and will 
please the house-mother. Take this silver 
bit for it and leave it for me.” 

The color died out of the face of the 
young Ardennois; he lifted his head and 
put his hands behind his back. “Keep 
your money and the portrait both, Baas 
Cogez,” he said, simply. “You have been 
often good to me.” Then he called 
Patrasche to him, and walked away across 
the field. 



Nello drew their likeness with a stick of charcoal. 


59 










































































60 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


“I could have seen them with that 
franc,” he murmured to Patrasche, “but 
I could not sell her picture—not even for 
them.” 

Bass Cogez went into his mill-house 
sore troubled in his mind. “That lad must 
not be so much with Alois,” he said to his 
wife that night. “Trouble may come of it 
hereafter: he is fifteen now, and she is 
twelve; and the boy is comely of face and 
form.” 

“And he is a good lad and a loyal,” 
said the house-wife, feasting her eyes on 
the piece of pine wood where it was 
throned above the chimney with a cuckoo 
clock in oak and a Calvary in wax. 

“Yea, I do not gainsay that,” said the 
miller, draining his pewter flagon. 

“Then, if what you think of were ever 
to come to pass,” said the wife, hesitat- 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


61 



The Housewife. 


ingly, “would it matter so much? She 
will have enough for both, and one cannot 
be better than happy.” 

“You are a woman, and therefore a 
fool,” said the miller, harshly, striking 
his pipe on the table. “The lad is naught 
but a beggar, and, with these painter’s 
fancies, worse than a beggar. Have a care 
that they are not together in the future, 
or I will send the child to the surer keep¬ 
ing of the nuns of the Sacred Heart.” 












62 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


The poor mother was terrified, and 
promised humbly to do his will. Not that 
she could bring herself altogether to sep¬ 
arate the child from her favorite play¬ 
mate, nor did the miller even desire that 
extreme of cruelty to a young lad who was 
guilty of nothing except poverty. But 
there were many ways in which little 
Alois was kept away from her chosen com¬ 
panion; and Nello, being a boy proud and 
quiet and sensitive, was quickly wounded, 
and ceased to turn his own steps and those 
of Patrasche, as he had been used to do 
with every moment of leisure, to the old 
red mill upon the slope. What his offence 
was he did not know: he supposed he had 
in some manner angered Baas Cogez by 
taking the portrait of Alois in the 
meadow; and when the child who loved 
him would run to him and nestle her hand 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


63 



in his, he would smile at her very sadly 
and say with a tender concern for her 
before himself, “Nay, Alois, do not anger 
your father. He thinks that I make you 
idle, dear, and he is not pleased that you 
should be with me. He is a good man and 
loves you well: we will not anger him, 
Alois.” 

But it was with a sad heart that he said 
it, and the earth did not look so bright to 







64 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


him as it had used to do when he went out 
at sunrise under the poplars down the 
straight roads with Patrasche. The old 
red mill had been a landmark to him, and 
he had been used to pause by it, going and 
coming, for a cheery greeting with its 
people as her little flaxen head rose above 
the low mill-wicket, and her little rosy 
hands had held out a bone or a crust to 
Patrasche. Now the dog looked wistfully 
at a closed door, and the boy went on 
without pausing, with a pang at his heart, 
and the child sat within with tears drop¬ 
ping slowly on the knitting to which she 
was set on her little stool by the stove; and 
Baas Cogez, working among his sacks and 
his mill-gear, would harden his will and 
say to himself, “It is best so. The lad is all 
but a beggar, and full of idle, dreaming 
fooleries. Who knows what mischief 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


65 



The child sat within ivith tears dropping slowly on the knitting. 


might not come of it in the future?” So 
he was wise in his generation, and would 
not have the door unbarred, except upon 
rare and formal occasions, which seemed 
to have neither warmth nor mirth in them 
to the two children, who had been accus¬ 
tomed so long to a daily gleeful, careless, 
happy interchange of greeting, speech, 
and pastime, with no other watcher of 
their sports or auditor of their fancies 


66 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


than Patrasche, sagely shaking the brazen 
bells of his collar and responding with all 
a dog’s swift sympathies to their every 
change of mood. 

All this while the little panel of pine 
wood remained over the chimney in the 
mill-kitchen with the cuckoo clock and 
the waxen Calvary, and sometimes it 
seemed to Nello a little hard that whilst 
his gift was accepted he himself should be 
denied. 

But he did not complain: it was his 
habit to be quiet: old Jehan Daas had said 
ever to him, “We are poor: we must take 
what God sends—the ill with the good: 
the poor cannot choose.” 

To which the boy had always listened 
in silence, being reverent of his old grand¬ 
father; but nevertheless a certain vague, 
sweet hope, such as beguiles the children 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


67 


of genius, had whispered in his heart, 
“Yet the poor do choose sometimes— 
choose to be great, so that men cannot say 
them nay.” And he thought so still in his 
innocence; and one day, when the little 
Alois, finding him by chance alone among 
the cornfields by the canal, ran to him and 
held him close, and sobbed piteously 
because the morrow would be her saint’s 
day, and for the first time in all her life 
her parents had failed to bid him to the 
little supper and romp in the great barns 
with which her feast-day was always cele¬ 
brated, Nello had kissed her and mur¬ 
mured to her in firm faith, “It shall be 
different one day, Alois. One day that 
little bit of pine wood that your father has 
of mine shall be worth its weight in silver; 
and he will not shut the door against me 
then. Only love me always, dear little 


68 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 



Alois, only love me always, and I will be 
great.” 

“And if I do not love you?” the pretty 
child asked, pouting a little through her 
tears, and moved by the instinctive 
coquetries of her sex. 

Nello’s eyes left her face and wandered 
to the distance, where in the red and gold 
of the Flemish night the cathedral spire 
rose. There was a smile on his face so 
sweet and yet so sad that little Alois was 
awed by it. “I will be great still,” he said 



















A DOG OF FLANDERS 


69 


under his breath—“great still, or die, 
Alois.” 

“You do not love me,” said the little 
spoilt child, pushing him away; but the 
boy shook his head and smiled, and went 
on his way through the tall yellow corn, 
seeing as in a vision some day in a fair 
future when he should come into that old 
familiar land and ask Alois of her people, 
and be not refused or denied, but received 
in honor, whilst the village folk should 
throng to look upon him and say in one 
another’s ears, “Dost see him? He is a 
king among men, for he is a great artist 
and the world speaks his name; and yet 
he was only our poor little Nello, who was 
a beggar, as one may say, and only got his 
bread by the help of his dog.” And he 
thought how he would fold his grandsire 
in furs and purples, and portray him as 


70 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


the old man is portrayed in the Family in 
the chapel of St. Jacques; and of how he 
would hang the throat of Patrasche with 
a collar of gold, and place him on his right 
hand, and say to the people, “This was 
once my only friend”; and of how he 
would build himself a great white marble 
palace, and make to himself luxuriant 
gardens of pleasure, on the slope looking 
outward to where the cathedral spire rose, 
and not dwell in it himself, but summon 
to it, as to a home, all men young and poor 
and friendless, but of the will to do 
mighty things; and of how he would say to 
them always, if they sought to bless his 
name, “Nay, do not thank me—thank 
Rubens. Without him, what should I 
have been?” And these dreams, beautiful, 
impossible, innocent, free of all selfish¬ 
ness, full of heroical worship, were so 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


71 


closely about him as he went that he was 
happy—happy even on this sad anniver¬ 
sary of Alois’s saint’s day, when he and 
Patrasche went home by themselves to 
the little dark hut and the meal of black 
bread, whilst in the mill-house all the 
children of the village sang and laughed, 
and ate the big round cakes of Dijon and 
the almond gingerbread of Brabant, and 
danced in the great barn to the light of 
the stars and the music of flute and fiddle. 

“Never mind, Patrasche,” he said 
with his arms round the dog’s neck as they 
both sat in the door of the hut, where the 
sounds of the mirth at the mill came down 
to them on the night air—“never mind. 
It shall all be changed by and by.” 

He believed in the future: Patrasche, 
of more experience and of more philos¬ 
ophy, thought that the loss of the mill 


72 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 



“Never mind , Patrasche 99 he said . 


supper in the present was ill compensated 
by dreams of milk and honey in some 
vague hereafter. And Patrasche growled 
whenever he passed by Baas Cogez. 






Chapter VIII 

“This is Alois’s name-day, is it not?” 
said the old man Daas that night from the 
comer where he was stretched upon his 
bed of sacking. 

The boy gave a gesture of assent: he 
wished that the old man’s memory had 
erred a little, instead of keeping such sure 
account. 

“And why not there?” his grandfather 
pursued. “Thou has never missed a year 
before, Nello.” 

“Thou art too sick to leave,” mur¬ 
mured the lad, bending his handsome 
young head over the bed. 

“Tut! tut! Mother Nulette would have 
come and sat with me, as she does scores 
of times. What is the cause, Nello?” the 


73 


74 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


old man persisted. “Thou surely hast not 
had ill words with the little one?” 

“Nay, grandfather—never,” said the 
boy quickly, with a hot color in his bent 
face. “Simply and truly, Baas Cogez did 
not have me asked this year. He has taken 
some whim against me.” 

“But thou hast done nothing wrong?” 

“That I know—nothing. I took the 
portrait of Alois on a piece of pine: that 
is all.” 

“Ah!” The old man was silent: the 
truth suggested itself to him with the 
boy’s innocent answer. He was tied to a 
bed of dried leaves in the corner of a 
wattle hut, but he had not wholly for¬ 
gotten what the ways of the world were 
like. 

He drew Nello’s fair head fondly to his 
breast with a tender gesture. “Thou art 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


75 


very poor, my child,” he said with a 
quiver the more in his aged, trembling 
voice—“so poor! It is very hard for thee!” 

“Nay, I am rich,” murmured Nello; 
and in his innocence he thought so—rich 
with the imperishable powers that are 
mightier than the might of kings. And 
he went and stood by the door of the hut 
in the quiet autumn night, and watched 
the stars troop by and the tall poplars 
bend and shiver in the wind. All the 
casements of the mill-house were lighted, 
and every now and then the notes of the 
flute came to him. The tears fell down 
his cheeks, for he was hut a child, yet he 
smiled, for he said to himself, “In the 
future!” He stayed there until all was 
quite still and dark, then he and Patrasche 
went within and slept together, long and 
deeply, side by side. 


76 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


Now he had a secret which only 
Patrasche knew. There was a little out¬ 
house to the hut, which no one entered 
but himself—a dreary place, but with 
abundant clear light from the north. Here 
he had fashioned himself rudely an easel 
in rough lumber, and here on a great gray 
sea of stretched paper he had given shape 
to one of the innumerable fancies which 
possessed his brain. No one had ever 
taught him anything; colors he had no 
means to buy; he had gone without bread 
many a time to procure even the few rude 
vehicles that he had here; and it was only 
in black or white that he could fashion 
the things he saw. This great figure which 
he had drawn here in chalk was only an 
old man sitting on a fallen tree—only 
that. He had seen old Michel the wood¬ 
man sitting so at evening many a time. 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


77 



There was a little outhouse to the hut. 


He had never had a soul to tell him of out¬ 
line or perspective, of anatomy or of 
shadow, and yet he had given all the 
weary, worn-out age, all the sad, quiet 
patience, all the rugged, careworn pathos 
of his original, and given them so that the 
old lonely figure was a poem, sitting there, 
meditative and alone, on the dead tree, 
with the darkness of the descending night 
behind him. 

It was rude, of course, in a way, and 
had many faults, no doubt; and yet it was 













78 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


real, true in nature, true in art and very 
mournful, and in a manner beautiful. 

Patrasche had lain quiet countless 
hours watching its gradual creation after 
the labor of each day was done, and he 
knew that Nello had a hope—vain and 
wild perhaps, but strongly cherished—of 
sending this great drawing to compete for 
a prize of two hundred francs a year which 
it was announced in Antwerp would be 
open to every lad of talent, scholar or 
peasant, under eighteen, who would 
attempt to win it with some unaided work 
of chalk or pencil. Three of the foremost 
artists in the town of Rubens were to be 
the judges and elect the victor according 
to his merits. 

All the spring and summer and 
autumn Nello had been at work upon this 
treasure, which, if triumphant, would 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


79 


build him his first step toward indepen¬ 
dence and the mysteries of the art which 
he blindly, ignorantly, and yet passion¬ 
ately adored. 

He said nothing to any one: his grand¬ 
father would not have understood, and 
little Alois was lost to him. Only to 
Patrasche he told all, and whispered, 
“Rubens would give it me, I think, if he 
knew.” 

Patrasche thought so too, for he 
knew that Rubens had loved dogs or he 
had never painted them with such exqui¬ 
site fidelity; and men who loved dogs 
were, as Patrasche knew, always pitiful. 

The drawings were to go in on the first 
day of December, and the decision be 
given on the twenty-fourth, so that he 
who should win might rejoice with all his 
people at the Christmas season. 


80 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


In the twilight of a bitter wintry day, 
and with a beating heart, now quick with 
hope, now faint with fear, Nello placed 
the great picture on his little green 
milk-cart, and took it, with the help of 
Patrasche, into the town, and there left 
it, as enjoined, at the doors of a public 
building. 

“Perhaps it is worth nothing at all. 
How can I tell?” he thought, with the 
heart-sickness of a great timidity. Now 
that he had left it there, it seemed to him 
so hazardous, so vain, so foolish, to dream 
that he, a little lad with bare feet, who 
barely knew his letters, could do anything 
at which great painters, real artists, could 
ever deign to look. Yet he took heart as 
he went by the cathedral: the lordly form 
of Rubens seemed to rise from the fog and 
the darkness, and to loom in its magnifi- 



In the twilight of a bitter wintry day Nello placed the great picture on his 
little milk-cart, and took it, with the help of Patrasche into town. 


81 

































































































82 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


cence before him, whilst the lips, with 
their kindly smile, seemed to him to mur¬ 
mur, “Nay, have courage! It was not by 
a weak heart and by faint fears that I 
wrote my name for all time upon Ant¬ 
werp.” 

Nello ran home through the cold 
night comforted. He had done his best: 
the rest must be as God willed, he thought, 
in that innocent, unquestioning faith 
which had been taught him in the little 
gray chapel among the willows and the 
poplar-trees. 

The winter was very sharp already. 
That night, after they reached the hut, 
snow fell; and fell for very many days 
after that, so that the paths and the divi¬ 
sions in the fields were all obliterated, and 
all the smaller streams were frozen over, 
and the cold was intense upon the plains. 
Then, indeed, it became hard work to go 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


83 


round for milk while the world was all 
dark, and carry it through the darkness 
to the silent town. Hard work, especially 
for Patrasche, for the passage of the years, 
that were only bringing Nello a stronger 
youth, were bringing him old age, and his 
joints were stiff and his bones ached often. 
But he would never give up his share of 
the labor. Nello would fain have spared 
him and drawn the cart himself, but 
Patrasche would not allow it. All he 
would ever permit or accept was the help 
of a thrust from behind to the truck as it 
lumbered along through the ice-ruts. 
Patrasche had lived in harness, and he was 
proud of it. He suffered a great deal some¬ 
times from frost, and the terrible roads, 
and the rheumatic pains of his limbs, but 
he only drew his breath hard and bent his 
stout neck, and trod onward with steady 
patience. 


84 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


“Rest thee at home, Patrasche—it is 
time thou didst rest—and I can quite well 
push in the cart by myself,” urged Nello 
many a morning; but Patrasche, who 
understood him aright, would no more 
have consented to stay at home than a 
veteran soldier to shirk when the charge 
was sounding; and every day he would 
rise and place himself in his shafts, and 
plod along over the snow through the 
fields that his four round feet had left 
their print upon so many, many years. 

“One must never rest till one dies,” 
thought Patrasche; and sometimes it 
seemed to him that that time of rest for 
him was not very far off. His sight was 
less clear than it had been, and it gave him 
pain to rise after the night’s sleep, though 
he would never lie a moment in his straw 
when once the bell of the chapel tolling 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


85 


five let him know that the daybreak of 
labor had begun. 

“My poor Patrasche, we shall soon lie 
quiet together, you and I,” said old Jehan 
Daas, stretching out to stroke the head of 
Patrasche with the old withered hand 
which had always shared with him its one 
poor crust of bread; and the hearts of the 
old man and the old dog ached together 
with one thought: When they were gone, 
who would care for their darling? 











Chapter IX 


One afternoon, as they came back 
from Antwerp over the snow, which had 
become hard and smooth as marble over 
all the Flemish plains, they found 
dropped in the road a pretty little puppet, 
a tambourine-player, all scarlet and gold, 
about six inches high, and, unlike greater 
personages when Fortune lets them drop, 
quite unspoiled and unhurt by its fall. It 
was a pretty toy. Nello tried to find its 
owner, and, failing, thought that it was 
just the thing to please Alois. 

It was quite night when he passed the 
mill-house: he knew the little window of 
her room. It could be no harm, he 
thought, if he gave her his little piece of 
treasure-trove, they had been playfellows 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


87 


so long. There was a shed with a sloping 
roof beneath her casement: he climbed it 
and tapped softly at the lattice: there was 
a little light within. The child opened it 
and looked out half frightened. 

Nello put the tambourine-player into 
her hands. “Here is a doll I found in the 
snow, Alois. Take it,” he whispered— 
“take it, and God bless thee, dear!” 

He slid down from the shed-roof 
before she had time to thank him, and ran 
off through the darkness. 

That night there was a fire at the mill. 
Out-buildings and much corn were 
destroyed, although the mill itself and the 
dwelling-house were unharmed. All the 
village was out in terror, and engines 
came tearing through the snow from 
Antwerp. The miller was insured, and 
would lose nothing: nevertheless, he was 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 



Baas Cogez being an obstinate man. 


in furious wrath, and declared aloud that 
the fire was due to no accident, but to 
some foul intent. 

Nello, awakened from his sleep, ran to 
help with the rest: Baas Cogez thrust him 
angrily aside. “Thou wert loitering here 
after dark,” he said roughly. “I believe, 
on my soul, that thou dost know more of 
the fire than any one.” 

Nello heard him in silence, stupefied, 
not supposing that any one could say such 








A DOG OF FLANDERS 


89 



Nello dwelt in one little world. 


things except in jest, and not compre¬ 
hending how any one could pass a jest at 
such a time. 

Nevertheless, the miller said the brutal 
thing openly to many of his neighbors in 
the day that followed; and though no seri¬ 
ous charge was ever preferred against the 
lad, it got bruited about that Nello had 
been seen in the mill-yard after dark on 
some unspoken errand, and that he bore 
Baas Cogez a grudge for forbidding his 
intercourse with little Alois; and so the 






















90 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


hamlet, which followed the sayings of its 
richest landowner servilely, and whose 
families all hoped to secure the riches of 
Alois in some future time for their sons, 
took the hint to give grave looks and cold 
words to old Jehan Daas’s grandson. No 
one said anything to him openly, but all 
the village agreed together to humor the 
miller’s prejudice, and at the cottages and 
farms where Nello and Patrasche called 
every morning for the milk for Antwerp, 
downcast glances and brief phrases 
replaced to them the broad smiles and 
cheerful greetings to which they had been 
always used. No one really credited the 
miller’s absurd suspicion, nor the outra¬ 
geous accusations born of them, but the 
people were all very poor and very igno¬ 
rant, and the one rich man of the place 
had pronounced against him. Nello, in his 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


91 


innocence and his friendliness, had no 
strength to stem the popular tide. 

“Thou art very cruel to the lad,” the 
miller’s wife dared to say, weeping, to her 
lord. “Sure he is an innocent lad and a 
faithful, and would never dream of any 
such wickedness, however sore his heart 
might be.” 

But Baas Cogez being an obstinate 
man, having once said a thing held to it 
doggedly, though in his innermost soul he 
knew well the injustice that he was com¬ 
mitting. 

Meanwhile, Nello endured the injury 
done against h i m with a certain proud 
patience that disdained to complain: he 
only gave way a little when he was quite 
alone with old Patrasche. Besides, he 
thought, “If it should win! They will be 
sorry then, perhaps.” 


92 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 



Just the thing to please Alois. 


Still, to a boy not quite sixteen, and 
who had dwelt in one little world all his 
short life, and in his childhood had been 
caressed and applauded on all sides, it was 
a hard trial to have the whole of that little 
world turn against him for naught. Espe¬ 
cially hard in that bleak, snow-bound, 
famine-stricken winter-time, when the 
only light and warmth there could be 
found abode beside the village hearths 








A DOG OF FLANDERS 


93 



and in the kindly greetings of neighbors. 
In the winter-time all drew nearer to each 
other, all to all, except to Nello and 
Patrasche, with whom none now would 
have anything to do, and who were left to 
fare as they might with the old paralyzed, 
bedridden man in the little cabin, whose 
fire was often low, and whose board was 
often without bread, for there was a buyer 
from Antwerp who had taken to drive his 






94 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


taule in of a day for the milk of the vari¬ 
ous dairies, and there were only three or 
four of the people who had refused his 
terms of purchase and remained faithful 
to the little green cart. So that the burden 
which Patrasche drew had become very 
light, and the centime-pieces in Nello’s 
pouch had become alas! very small like¬ 
wise. 

The dog would stop, as usual, at all the 
familiar gates which were now closed to 
him, and look up at them with wistful, 
mute appeal; and it cost the neighbors a 
pang to shut their doors and their hearts, 
and let Patrasche draw his cart on again, 
empty. Nevertheless, they did it, for they 
desired to please Baas Cogez. 


Chapter X 

Noel* was close at hand. 

The weather was very wild and cold. 
The snow was six feet deep, and the ice 
was firm enough to bear oxen and men 
upon it everywhere. At this season the 
little village was always gay and cheerful. 
At the poorest dwelling there were possets 
and cakes, joking and dancing, sugared 
saints and gilded Jesus. The merry Flem¬ 
ish bells jingled everywhere on the horses; 
everywhere within doors some well-filled 
soup-pot sang and smoked over the stove; 
and everywhere over the snow without 
laughing maidens pattered in bright ker¬ 
chiefs and stout kirtles, going to and from 
the mass. Only in the little hut it was very 
dark and very cold. 


♦Noel—French word for Christmas. 


95 


96 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


Nello and Patrasche were left utterly 
alone, for one night in the week before 
the Christmas Day, Death entered there, 
and took away from life forever old Jehan 
Daas, who had never known of life aught 
save its poverty and its pains. He had 
long been half dead, incapable of any 
movement except a feeble gesture, and 
powerless for anything beyond a gentle 
word; and yet his loss fell on them both 
with a great horror in it: they mourned 
him passionately. He had passed away 
from them in his sleep, and when in the 
gray dawn they learned their bereave¬ 
ment, unutterable solitude and desolation 
seemed to close around them. He had 
long been only a poor, feeble, paralyzed 
old man, who could not raise a hand in 
their defence, but he had loved them well: 
his smile had always welcomed their re- 



He went and begged grace of the owner of the hut. 


97 





















































































A DOG OF FLANDERS 


turn. They mourned for him unceasingly, 
refusing to be comforted, as in the white 
winter day they followed the dead shell 
that held his body to the nameless grave 
by the little gray church. They were his 
only mourners, these two whom he had 
left friendless upon earth—the young boy 
and the old dog. 

“Surely, he will relent now and let the 
poor lad come hither?” thought the mill¬ 
er’s wife, glancing at her husband where 
he smoked by the hearth. 

Baas Cogez knew her thought, but he 
hardened his heart, and would not unbar 
his door as the little, humble funeral went 
by. “The boy is a beggar,” he said to him¬ 
self: “he shall not be about Alois.” 

The woman dared not say anything 
aloud, but when the grave was closed and 
the mourners had gone, she put a wreath 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


99 


of immortelles into Alois’s hands and 
bade her go and lay it reverently on the 
dark, unmarked mound where the snow 
was displaced. 

Nello and Patrasche went home with 
broken hearts. But even of that poor, 
melancholy, cheerless home they were 
denied the consolation. There was a 
month’s rent over-due for their little 
home, and when Nello had paid the last 
sad service to the dead he had not a coin 
left. He went and begged grace of the 
owner of the hut, a cobbler who went 
every Sunday night to drink his pint of 
wine and smoke with Baas Cogez. The 
cobbler would grant no mercy. He was a 
harsh, miserly man, and loved money. He 
claimed in default of his rent every stick 
and stone, every pot and pan, in the hut, 
and bade Nello and Patrasche be out of it 
on the morrow. 


100 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


Now, the cabin was lowly enough, and 
in some sense miserable enough, and yet 
their hearts clove to it with a great affec¬ 
tion. They had been so happy there, and 
in the summer, with its clambering vine 
and its flowering beans, it was so pretty 
and bright in the midst of the sun-lighted 
fields! Their life in it had been full of 
labor and privation, and yet they had 
been so well content, so gay of heart, run¬ 
ning together to meet the old man’s 
never-failing smile of welcome! 

All night long the boy and the dog sat 
by the fireless hearth in the darkness, 
drawn close together for warmth and sor¬ 
row. Their bodies were insensible to the 
cold, but their hearts seemed frozen in 
them. 

When the morning broke over the 
white, chill earth it was the morning of 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


101 


Christmas Eve. With a shudder, Nello 
clasped close to him his only friend, while 
his tears fell hot and fast on the dog’s 
frank forehead. “Let us go Patrasche— 
dear, dear Patrasche,” he murmured. 
“We will not wait to be kicked out: let us 
go.” 

Patrasche had no will but his, and they 
went sadly, side by side, out from the 
little place which was so dear to them 
both, and in which every humble, homely 
thing was to them precious and beloved. 
Patrasche drooped his head wearily as he 
passed by his own green cart: it was no 
longer his—it had to go with the rest to 
pay the rent, and his brass harness lay idle 
and glittering on the snow. The dog could 
have lain down beside it and died for very 
heart-sickness as he went, but whilst the 
lad lived and needed him Patrasche would 
not yield and give way. 


102 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


They took the old accustomed road 
into Antwerp. The day had yet scarce 
more than dawned, most of the shutters 
were still closed, but some of the villagers 
were about. They took no notice whilst 
the dog and the boy passed by them. At 
one door Nello paused and looked wist¬ 
fully within: his grandfather had done 
many a kindly turn in neighbor’s service 
to the people who dwelt there. 

“Would you give Patrasche a crust?” 
he said, timidly. “He is old, and he has 
had nothing since last forenoon.” 

The woman shut the door hastily, 
murmuring some vague saying about 
wheat and rye being very dear that season. 
The boy and the dog went on again 
wearily: they asked no more. 

By slow and painful ways they reached 
Antwerp as the chimes tolled ten. 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


103 


“If I had anything about me I could 
sell to get him bread!” thought Nello, but 
he had nothing except the wisp of linen 
and serge that covered him, and his pair 
of wooden shoes. 

Patrasche understood, and nestled his 
nose into the lad’s hand, as though to pray 
him not to be disquieted for any woe or 
want of his. 

The winner of the drawing-prize was 
to be proclaimed at noon, and to the pub¬ 
lic building where he had left his treasure 
Nello made his way. On the steps and in 
the entrance-hall there was a crowd of 
youths—some of his age, some older, all 
with parents or relatives or friends. His 
heart was sick with fear as he went among 
them, holding Patrasche close to him. 
The great bells of the city clashed out the 
hour of noon with brazen clamor. The 


104 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 



doors of the inner hall were opened; the 
eager, panting throng rushed in: it was 
known that the selected picture would be 
raised above the rest upon a wooden dais. 

A mist obscured Nello’s sight, his head 
swam, his limbs almost failed him. When 
his vision cleared he saw the drawing 
raised on high: it was not his own! A slow, 
sonorous voice was proclaiming aloud that 
victory had been adjudged to Stephan 
Kiesslinger, born in the burgh of Ant¬ 
werp, son of a wharfinger in that town. 








Chapter XI 

When Nello recovered his conscious¬ 
ness he was lying on the stones without, 
and Patrasche was trying with every art 
he knew to call him back to life. In the 
distance a throng of the youths of Ant¬ 
werp were shouting around their success¬ 
ful comrade, and escorting him with 
acclamations to his home upon the quay. 

The boy staggered to his feet and drew 
the dog into his embrace. “It is all over, 
dear Patrasche,” he murmured — “all 
over!” 

He rallied himself as best he could, 
for he was weak from fasting, and retraced 
his steps to the village. Patrasche paced 
by his side with his head drooping and his 
old limbs feeble from hunger and sorrow. 


105 


106 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


The snow was falling fast: a keen hur¬ 
ricane blew from the north: it was bitter 
as death on the plains. It took them long 
to traverse the familiar path, and the bells 
were sounding four of the clock as 
they approached the hamlet. Suddenly 
Patrasche paused, arrested by a scent in 
the snow, scratched, whined, and drew 
out with his teeth a small case of brown 
leather. He held it up to Nello in the 
darkness. Where they were there stood a 
little Calvary, and a lamp burned dully 
under the cross: the boy mechanically 
turned the case to the light: on it was the 
name of Baas Cogez, and within it were 
notes for two thousand francs. 

The sight roused the lad a little from 
his stupor. He thrust it in his shirt, and 
stroked Patrasche and drew him onward. 
The dog looked up wistfully in his face. 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


107 


Nello made straight for the mill-house, 
and went to the house-door and struck on 
its panels. The miller’s wife opened it 
weeping, with little Alois clinging close to 
her skirts. “Is it thee, thou poor lad?” 
she said kindly through her tears. “Get 
thee gone ere the Baas see thee. We are in 
sore trouble tonight. He is out seeking 
for a power of money that he has let fall 
riding homeward, and in this snow he 
never will find it; and God knows it will 
go nigh to ruin us. It is Heaven’s own 
judgment for the things we have done to 
thee.” 

Nello put the note-case in her hand 
and called Patrasche within the house. 
“Patrasche found the money tonight,” he 
said quickly. “Tell Baas Cogez so: I think 
he will not deny the dog shelter and food 
in his old age. Keep him from pursuing 
me, and I pray of you to be good to him.” 


108 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


Ere either woman or dog knew what 
he meant he had stooped and kissed 
Patrasche: then closed the door hurriedly, 
and disappeared in the gloom of the fast¬ 
falling night. 

The woman and the child stood 
speechless with joy and fear; Patrasche 
vainly spent the fury of his anguish 
against the iron-bound oak of the barred 
house-door. They did not dare unbar the 
door and let him forth; they tried all 
they could to solace him. They brought 
him sweet cakes and juicy meats; they 
tempted him with the best they had; they 
tried to lure him to abide by the warmth 
of the hearth; but it was of no avail. 
Patrasche refused to be comforted or to 
stir from the barred portal. 

It was six o’clock when from an oppo¬ 
site entrance the miller at last came, jaded 



109 













































110 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


and broken, into his wife’s presence. “It 
is lost forever,” he said with an ashen 
cheek and a quiver in his stern voice. 
“We have looked with lanterns every¬ 
where; it is gone—the little maiden’s por¬ 
tion and all!” 

His wife put the money into his hand, 
and told him how it had come to her. 
The strong man sank trembling into a 
seat and covered his face, ashamed and 
almost afraid. “I have been cruel to the 
lad,” he muttered at length: “I deserved 
not to have good at his hands.” 

Little Alois, taking courage, crept 
close to her father and nestled against 
him her fair curly head. “Nello may come 
here again, father?” she whispered. “He 
may come to-morrow as he used to do?” 

The miller pressed her in his arms; 
his hard, sun-burned face was very pale 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


111 


and his mouth trembled. “Surely, sure¬ 
ly,” he answered his child. “He shall 
bide here on Christmas Day, and any 
other day he will. God helping me, I will 
make amends to the boy—I will make 
amends.” 

Little Alois kissed him in gratitude 
and joy, then slid from his knees and ran 
to where the dog kept watch by the door. 
“And to-night I may feast Patrasche?” 
she cried in a child’s thoughtless glee. 

Her father bent his head gravely: “Ay, 
ay; let the dog have the best;” for the 
stern old man was moved and shaken to 
his heart’s depths. 


Chapter XII 


It was Christmas Eve, and the mill- 
house was filled with oak logs and squares 
of turf, with cream and honey, with meat 
and bread, and the rafters were hung with 
wreaths of evergreen, and the Calvary and 
the cuckoo clock looked out from a mass 
of holly. There were little paper lanterns, 
too, for Alois, and toys of various fashions 
and sweetmeats in bright-pictured papers. 
There were light and warmth and abun¬ 
dance everywhere, and the child would 
fain have made the dog a guest honored 
and feasted. 

But Patrasche would neither lie in the 
warmth nor share in the cheer. Famished 
he was and very cold, but without Nello 
he would partake neither of comfort nor 


112 



113 






















































































114 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


food. Against all temptation he was proof, 
and close against the door he leaned al¬ 
ways, watching only for a means of escape. 

“He wants the lad,” said Baas Cogez. 
“Good dog! good dog! I will go over to the 
lad the first thing at day-dawn.” For no 
one but Patrasche knew that Nello had 
left the hut, and no one but Patrasche di¬ 
vined that Nello had gone to face starva¬ 
tion and misery alone. 

The mill-kitchen was very warm; great 
logs crackled and flamed on the hearth; 
neighbors came in for a glass of wine and 
a slice of fat goose baking for supper. 
Alois, gleeful and sure of her playmate 
back on the morrow, bounded and sang 
and tossed back her yellow hair. Baas 
Cogez, in the fulness of his heart, smiled 
on her through moistened eyes, and spoke 
of the way in which he would befriend 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


115 


her favorite companion; the house¬ 
mother sat with calm, contented face at 
the spinning-wheel; the cuckoo in the 
clock chirped mirthful hours. Amidst it 
all Patrasche was bidden with a thousand 
words of welcome to tarry there a cher¬ 
ished guest. But neither peace nor plenty 
could allure him where Nello was not. 

When the supper smoked on the 
board, and the voices were loudest and 
gladdest, and the Christ-child brought 
choicest gifts to Alois, Patrasche, watch¬ 
ing always an occasion, glided out when 
the door was unlatched by a careless new¬ 
comer, and as swiftly as his weak and tired 
limbs would hear him sped over the snow 
in the bitter, black night. He had only 
one thought—to follow Nello. A human 
friend might have paused for the pleasant 
meal, the cheery warmth, the cosy slum- 


116 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 



ber; but that was not the friendship of Pa- 
trasche. He remembered a bygone time, 
when an old man and a little child had 
found him sick unto death in the wayside 
ditch. 

Snow had fallen freshly all the even¬ 
ing long; it was now nearly ten; the trail 
of the boy’s footsteps was almost obliter¬ 
ated. It took Patrasche long to discover 
any scent. When at last he found it, it 
was lost again quickly, and lost and re- 












A DOG OF FLANDERS 


117 



It took Patrasche long to discover any scent. 


covered, and again lost and recovered, a 
hundred times or more. 

The night was very wild. The lamps 
under the wayside crosses were blown 
out; the roads were sheets of ice; the im¬ 
penetrable darkness hid every trace of 
habitations; there was no living thing 
abroad. All the cattle were housed, and in 
all the huts and homesteads men and wo¬ 
men rejoiced and feasted. There was only 
Patrasche out in the cruel cold—old and 








118 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


famished and full of pain, but with the 
strength and the patience of a great love 
to sustain him in his search. 

The trail of Nello’s steps, faint and ob¬ 
scure as it was under the new snow, went 
straightly along the accustomed tracks 
into Antwerp. It was past midnight when 
Patrasche traced it over the boundaries of 
the town and into the narrow, tortuous, 
gloomy streets. It was all quite dark in 
the town, save where some light gleamed 
ruddily through the crevices of house- 
shutters or some group went homeward 
with lanterns chanting drinking-songs. 
The streets were all white with ice; the 
high walls and roofs loomed black against 
them. There was scarce a sound save the 
riot of the winds down the passages as 
tossed the creaking signs and shook the 
tall lamp-irons. 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


119 


So many passers-by had trodden 
through and through the snow, so many 
diverse paths had crossed and re-crossed 
each other, that the dog had a hard task 
to retain any hold on the track he fol¬ 
lowed. But he kept on his way though 
the cold pierced him to the bone, and the 
jagged ice cut his feet, and the hunger in 
his body gnawed like a rat’s teeth. He 
kept on his way, a poor gaunt, shivering 
thing, and by long patience traced the 
steps he loved into the very heart of the 
burgh and up to the steps of the great 
cathedral. 

“He is gone to the things that he 
loved,” thought Patrasche: he could not 
understand, but he was full of sorrow and 
of pity for the art-passion that to him was 
so incomprehensible and yet so sacred. 


Chapter XIII 


The portals of the cathedral were un¬ 
closed after the midnight mass. Some 
heedlessness in the custodians, too eager 
to go home and feast or sleep, or too 
drowsy to know whether they turned the 
keys aright, had left one of the doors un¬ 
locked. By that accident the foot-falls 
Patrasche sought had passed through into 
the building, leaving the white marks of 
snow upon the dark stone floor. By that 
slender white thread, frozen as it fell, he 
was guided through the intense silence, 
through the immensity of the vaulted 
space—guided straight to the gates of the 
chancel, and, stretched there upon the 
stones, he found Nello. He crept up and 
touched the face of the boy. “Didst thou 


120 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


121 


dream that I should be faithless and for¬ 
sake thee? I—a dog?” said that mute 
caress. 

The lad raised himself with a low cry 
and clasped him close. “Let us he down 
and die together,” he murmured. “Men 
have no need of us, and we are all alone.” 

In answer, Patrasche crept closer yet, 
and laid his head upon the young boy’s 
breast. The great tears stood in his 
brown, sad eyes: not for himself—for 
himself he was happy. 

They lay close together in the piercing 
cold. The blasts that blew over the Flem¬ 
ish dikes from the northern seas were like 
waves of ice, which froze every living 
thing they touched. The interior of the 
immense vault of stone in which they 
were was even more bitterly chill than 
the snow-covered plains without. Now 


122 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


and then a bat moved in the shadows— 
now and then a gleam of light came on 
the ranks of carven figures. Under the 
Rubens they lay together quite still, and 
soothed almost into a dreaming slumber 
by the numbing narcotic of the cold. To¬ 
gether they dreamed of the old glad days 
when they had chased each other through 
the flowering grasses of the summer mea¬ 
dows, or sat hidden in the tall bulrushes 
by the water’s side, watching the boats go 
seaward in the sun. 

Suddenly through the darkness a great 
white radiance streamed through the vast¬ 
ness of the aisles; the moon, that was at 
her height, had broken through the 
clouds, the sun had ceased to fall, the 
light reflected from the snow without was 
clear as the light of dawn. It fell through 
the arches full upon the two pictures 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


123 


above, from which the boy on his en¬ 
trance had flung back the veil: the Eleva¬ 
tion and the Descent of the Cross were for 
one instant visible. 

Nello rose to his feet and stretched his 
arms to them; the tears of a passionate ee- 
stacy glistened on the paleness of his face. 
“I have seen them at last!” he cried aloud. 
“0 God, it is enough!” 

His limbs failed under him, and he 
sank upon his knees, still gazing upward 
at the majesty that he adored. For a few 
brief moments the light illumined the di¬ 
vine visions that had been denied to him 
so long—light clear and sweet and strong 
as though it streamed from the throne of 
Heaven. Then suddenly it passed away: 
once more a great darkness covered the 
face of Christ. 

The arms of the boy drew close again 
the body of the dog. “We shall see His 


124 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


face—there,” he murmured; “and He will 
not part us, I think.” 

On the morrow, by the chancel of the 
cathedral, the people of Antwerp found 
them both. They were both dead: the cold 
of the night had frozen into stillness alike 
the young life and the old. When the 
Christmas morning broke and the priests 
came to the temple, they saw them lying 
thus on the stones together. Above, the 
veils were drawn back from the great 
visions of Rubens, and the fresh rays of 
the sunrise touched the thorn-crowned 
head of the Christ. 

As the day grew on there came an old, 
hard-featured man who wept as women 
weep. “I was cruel to the lad,” he mut¬ 
tered, “and now I would have made 
amends—yea, to the half of my substance 
—and he should have been to me as a 

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The Elevation and Descent of the Cross were for one instant visible. 


125 


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126 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


There came also, as the day grew 
apace, a painter who had fame in the 
world, and who was liberal of hand and 
spirit. “I seek one who should have had 
the prize yesterday had worth won,” he 
said to the people—“a hoy of rare promise 
and genius. An old wood-cutter on a 
fallen tree at eventide—that was all his 
theme. But there was greatness for the 
future in him. I would fain find him, and 
take him with me and teach him Art.” 

And a little child with curling fair 
hair, sobbing bitterly as she clung to her 
father’s arm, cried aloud, “Oh, Nello, 
come! We have all ready for thee. The 
Christ-child’s hands are full of gifts, and 
the old piper will play for us; and the 
mother says thou shalt stay by the hearth 
and burn nuts with us all the Noel week 
long—yes, even to the Feast of the Kings! 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


127 


And Patrasche will be so happy! Oh, 
Nello wake and come!” 

But the young pale face, turned up¬ 
ward to the light of the great Rubens with 
a smile upon its mouth, answered them 
all, “It is too late.” 

For the sweet, sonorous bells went 
ringing through the frost, and the sun¬ 
light shone upon the plains of snow, and 
the populace trooped gay and glad 
through the streets, but Nello and Pa¬ 
trasche no more asked charity at their 
hands. All they needed now Antwerp 
gave unbidden. 

Death had been more pitiful to them 
than longer life would have been. It had 
taken the one in the loyalty of love, and 
the other in the innocence of faith, from 
a world which for love has no recompense 
and for faith no fulfilment. 


128 


A DOG OF FLANDERS 


All their lives they had been together, 
and in their deaths they were not divided: 
for when they were found the arms of the 
boy were folded too closely around the 
dog to be severed without violence, and 
the people of their little village, contrite 
and ashamed, implored a special grace for 
them, and, making them one grave, laid 
them there side by side—forever! 










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